That's one of my favorite lines from Jaws, and a fitting celebration toast!

A last minute decision to take a trip out to the Southern California Surf had me checking tide charts, and consulting a friend and guide for the area Lee Baerman of Fly Fish the Surf on some good places to start. Intel in hand I packed the Impala and set out westward at about 11pm Friday night. Fighting to stay awake, making a few stupid Facebook posts along the way, I made it to my spot about 5:30am and started to rig up...

Kristen and I hit the San Juan in New Mexico for the Superbowl weekend for the 2nd year in hopefully a long tradition of fishing the San Juan for the Superbowl.

In the week leading up to the trip we were keeping an eye on the weather pretty close, and things went from Sunny and Warm to "Ice Pellets" and every kind of weather pattern in between. Thursday when we left there was a 40% chance of rain in the evening Friday with scattered clouds both Saturday and Sunday. That wasn't the case...

Like most things in the overpriced niche market of Fly Fishing, vehicle rod holders were something I wanted, but wasn't willing to spend $100-$200 on anytime soon. I studied a few of the designs I had come across and decided that I could probably make something comparable on the cheap.

With a design in mind I made a trip to Harbor Freight and the local hardware store to pick up some supplies. About an hour later I had the first one made and testing it out on the car, a little later on its first trip to the San Juan in New Mexico.

Almost 2 years later it has been on multiple trips, held a lot of rods and working great! I've had it up to 80mph on the freeway loaded down with rods, bumpy 4x4 trails in the forests, monsoon rains, frozen 18f mornings, 115f midday blazing sun and wet slushy snow all with no signs of failure. The key is getting a good suction location on the hood and windshield.

Recently my good buddy Ben Smith of Arizona Wanderings asked me if I could make a how-to on the rod holders. Luckily I had all but the collapsible nut on hand and built a second one for this tutorial. Its pic heavy as I tried to document each step in detail to make it easier to follow along at home... Here you go Ben!

This tutorial will show you how to tie an egg out of McFly foam on the tying thread. This technique makes building egg cliusters easy, leeches with trailing eggs (Eggs Over Leechy pattern coming soon!) or tying larger eggs on smaller hooks where the egg would eat up the hook gap.

No special thread is needed for this as you wont be putting a lot of tension on the thread to create the egg. Use the DiY Egg Foam Tool tutorial to build your egg foam dispensers and a little superglue is all you need.

Tired of having wire despool on you if you let go? Or wasting wire, floss, tinsel on each fly, it all ads up! These little Spool Minders are the solution. Put one of these on every spool that you don't normally pop into a bobbin and they will keep your materials on the spool while you tie, no waste, no dropped spools and 3 yards of floss ruined as it unspools across the floor.

A couple other guys have tutorials out there on how to make them, and Hareline even offers a commercial version for about a buck each. I've been making these for a few years and have my own take on them that I think is an improvement over the others out there.

Simple to make and work on the tying bench as well as tippet, line, and other unruly spools. Follow this tutorial on my take of the Spool Minders and let me know how they work for you!

I'm always in search of an easier or quicker way to do things, and while I love the strength and versatility of the Uni Knot (Duncan) It was a little slow to tie, and difficult in some lines for me.

I had watched a fishing video with Kelly Galloup and he used a Figure 8 knot to tie his flies on and swore by the knot. I replicated the knot but soon forgot how to tie it out of not using it. A year or so later I sat down to try and remember that knot and couldn't quite get it. I tied the knot in a lot of different ways before finding a knot that wasn't the original, but tied easily and was very strong.

McFly Foam eggs are easy to tie, but tend to waste about double the material that is needed to tie the actual egg. With this simple tool you can tie eggs with virtually no waste.

There are commercial tools out there that work the same for the most part, but one shortcoming of those and the first DiY tools I made were they were too long. Once the foam goes into the tool, you can't keep the tension on it and you'll end up wasting that last 2 inches or so. This one is smaller and you end up being able to keep tention all the way up to the last 1/4" or so.

Give these a try if you want to be able to crank out eggs in less than 45 seconds!

Quick and simple eggs using McFly Foam and the DiY Egg Foam Tool. Using the tool and this method you can crank out a dozen eggs in less than 10 minutes making re-stocking those boxes for the next trip a breeze.

In this article I'm going to go over the contruction of the Jig and all the tools I use to make Furled Leaders.

This Jig is lightweight, portable and very inexpensive to make. You can change the number of sections and length easily after completed if you decide to experiment with other leader formulas or want to make shorter or longer leaders.